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How to choose your webmaster?Web design is something between an art and a science. A web designer needs to be both objective and subjective in his objectives, strategies, methodology and evaluation. While the term webmaster is often used (most time inappropriately) web designer is more accurate although the world wide web cannot exactly be crafted by a designer, it really refers to an abbreviation of web site designer but for convenience has been shortened to simply web designer. Other terms used commonly are webmaster, website developer and web site designer. It really is quite difficult to quantify the talent of web designer because it truly depends on what area of expertise is involved in their related fields. Some web designers specialize in HTML static design, some do multimedia and flash sites while others concentrate their talents on designing and developing CMS dynamic websites. Another problem clients will also have when trying to decide and who to choose to develop their website is the their level of experience. Unfortunately, more often than not clients will be confused and have very little knowledge of the design process. How can you tel if the web designer actually knows what he is talking about? How do you know if he will provide your project with the appropriate technology? CMS web designersCMS stands for content management systems. The most popular ones in existence are Joomla, WordPress and Drupal. All these software applications are free and what are referred to as web based. This means that the website can be managed online either by the web designer or the client. The site can be designed and developed both online and offline and as is the case with Joomla CMS most of the work offline. All these CMS have their advantages, Drupal and Wordpress are very user friendly but Joomla is a lot more powerfull and expandable and is the platform we will be concentrating on now. As with any other web designer skill that you need to investigate before choosing the webmaster service for your project, check references and portfolio. You Joomla web designer should have expertise and experience in HTML, CSS and PHP. He should be familiar with Dreamweaver, Photoshop (Joomla of course) and a multitude of other website designing applications and platforms. A Joomla site is particularly difficult to develop because the development process in non intuitive unlike a plain HTML site than can be built using WYISYG (what you see is what you get) editors. A Joomla site needs to be created with 3 basic tool sets. Dreamweaver with Joomla extensions, and Apache Joomla stand alone server, Photoshop (Gimp, Paint.net) and Firefox with the Firebug and Chris Pen web developer extensions. Could be an idea to ask you Joomla web designer if he is familiar with any of the applications mentioned above, if not, he might not be who are are looking for. Basic HTML web designer knowledge and experienceEvaluating your web designer's basic HTML skills. HTML(hypertext markup language) is the basic language used to create websites. It never hurts to do some research on Wikipedia to get familiar with maybe about a dozen HTML basic terms to that you can actually understand the design process and "feel" through some properly asked questions if your web designer actually has some basic knowledge it his field, all web developers should have a minimum of basic HTML skills. Flash Web designersFlash animation is a multimedia technology conceptualized by Adobe systems to display animation and movies and sound on website. It is not recommended for most websites as alternative and original technology such as animated gif files or embedded MPEG files are usually more accessible for your audience. Flash animation requires the Adobe plugin and will often cause the website to loose visitors...however, in some cases like movie sites and entertainment websites, Flash can be used (but cautiously). So how do you know if your web designer can develop some nice flash movies for your site? This is even harder to quantify than HTML or CMS web designer skills, after all? Everyone has different taste in movies, book, food and music...the same goes with Flash website module development. So the best way to find out is to check out the portfolio and references, if you like what you see, your web designer probably shares your artistic values and everything should be fine. However, be careful about template work, some webmasters might use some flash templates to do your web site. While this might not be a problem in most cases, it could make you look like a copycat if your visitors recognize the flash template you web developer created for you from another website... Basic Web Design Guidelines
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How to tell the designer what you want?After choosing the firm that will conceptualize your web site, you will be faced with the challenge of actually explaining what you need done in plain English and have the designer interpret and transcribe your ideas into technology. A better understanding of website composition from your end will allow us to serve you better and ensure that the project will be completed to your satisfaction as effectively, accurately and economically as possible. A typical web site consists of 5 major elements:
- Content: articles, about us, privacy policy, contact information Content: What is your product or service? What makes you different from your competitors? What is your target audience? You should ask yourself these questions in order to have great content for your website. On the Internet, quality is very important is directly correlated to credibility. It's a good idea to treat your web site content writing like you would for an essay. The text for your website should be crafted with the highest of attention to detail. Grammar, orthographic and punctuation rules will need to be followed to the letter. Appropriate vocabulary is also important to show that you are an expert in your field. Care should also be taken not to sound too "sales pitchy". Online customers don't like to be sold on products or services in way that might work with conventional offline sales methods. The informational approach is usually the best, educate your prospective clients to make the right purchasing decision. Do this job right and you won't have to worry about the competition. Try to use keywords that are specific to your industry but don't overdo it. A keyword repeated 5-10 times per page is sufficient, anything more could be seen as spam by search engines and could get your web site in trouble. Make sure to provide us with at least 5 pages of content. One of these could be the homepage, the others as a general guideline should include at the minimum an "about us" page, privacy policy ( we can draft one for you ), contact us and pricing. Every page should contain a minimum of 250 words but preferably 500 or more. Another important piece of content is your contact information. In order to be taken seriously by search engines, it is crucial to provide us with your full street address including postal code, telephone number including regional and country code, province/state, country and email address. If you already own a business, use your registered and yellow pages address as search engines often share database information with them. Local search is getting increasingly important in the eyes of search engines, and showing them clearly where you are located will be well rewarded. Layout: Just like all cars might have different color schemes, engine sizes, power options or brand, they all share a common denominator: they have 4 wheels. The same goes for websites. The vast majority of web sites on the world wide web use a similar layout. It's based on the banner, navbar left, mainframe, navbar right and footer. Customization is of course available but this is the standard most effective, accepted, favored and economical format. Using this map will help you locate and organize where you want things to appear on your site:
Graphics:
The We can provide the images from professional stock photography or your can provide us with your own. Accepted format is .gif, .png or .jpeg. Images can be bigger and shrunk down to size but not the other way around. All custom logos, animations and graphic design can be done for you at a nominal fee. Elements: Elements are parameters that control variables of the site. They include but are not limited to text color/size/font/style, heading color, border color, border thickness, buttons and much more. Please remember however that all options are not always available since it might depend on the layout and template of the site. Let us know what you desire using the following guidelines and we will let you know what is possible or not and at what customization cost if modification is plausible.
Structure: How will you organize your content? This is a very important step of website design. Your information must flow in a logical and hierarchical manner. Ideas need to be defined, organized and classified. The best formula for this it the Grand Father > Son > Grand Son hierarchy. All information on the site should be based on this model. Just like a book has an index, chapters and a glossary, a website also has it's particular standardized structure characteristics that should be adhered to in order to have a solid structure and foundation. A well structured site will also be a lot easier to manage for future expansion and modifications.
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graphical interface